He toured all the roadless Bureau of Land Management lands in Eastern Oregon, camping, taking pictures and noting the natural and man-made features of the landscape. He looked for places where someone could find solitude and places with exceptional primitive recreation opportunities, like hiking or rafting or hunting.

"I looked at the naturalness of the area, and I documented reservoirs, routes, fence lines - basically did an overall assessment of, to the average person, does this area look natural or not," said Phelps, then a district wilderness specialist and now a recreation planner with the BLM.

The dozen areas he identified that summer as having potential wilderness qualities would later become the wilderness study areas that are still in the district today. Others were added when the district's boundaries changed.

And wilderness study areas are stuck in this kind of limbo until Congress takes action to either designate the land parcels as wilderness, or return it for other uses.

"Once it becomes a wilderness study area, only Congress can take that designation off," Phelps said.

There are more than 2.7 million acres of wilderness study areas in Oregon, including Central Oregon's Badlands east of Bend and Steelhead Falls to the west of Crooked River Ranch. The Prineville district of the BLM has about 217,000 acres of wilderness study areas, Phelps said.

Although the BLM's recommendations were finalized more than a dozen years ago, Congress has only acted on a handful of areas, including the Steens Mountain Wilderness in southeastern Oregon.

Congress also designates wilderness on U.S. Forest Service land, such as the Oregon delegation's proposed additions to the Mt. Hood Wilderness Area, which passed in the House this July.

Some lands on the Mt. Hood National Forest were designated as wilderness as a part of the 1964 Wilderness Act, and more pieces were added in 1978, said Glen Sachet, a public affairs specialist with the regional Forest Service office. Six years after that, with the Oregon Wilderness Act, more roadless areas became wilderness.

The current proposed legislation for Mt. Hood wilderness includes both roadless areas and other Forest Service lands, he said.

Roadless areas are probably the Forest Service's closest equivalent to wilderness study areas, said Sue Olson, spokeswoman with the Deschutes National Forest. The roadless areas are managed as if they could be wilderness some day.

"We don't manage roadless areas like we do matrix areas, where ongoing timber sales or other developmental projects occur," she said.

Wilderness study areas got their start in 1976, when Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

"That act of 1976 passed by Congress directed the Bureau of Land Management to inventory and study its remaining roadless areas, and make recommendations about whether it should become a wilderness area or not," Phelps said.

So in the Prineville BLM district, which covers Central Oregon from The Dalles to the La Pine area, staff started off by determining what should be considered a road, he said. From there, they mapped out where the roadless areas were, and then identified the locations of features like fences, pipelines, mining claims and easements.

"We went through and identified anything and everything in that geographic area," Phelps said.

Then Phelps set out to look at the "naturalness" of an area, the recreation opportunities, the chance to have solitude and other aspects such as botanical or geologic features to determine whether it could be wilderness.

The BLM in Oregon identified wilderness study areas in 1980, conducted more studies and took public input, and then in 1985 drew up a draft environmental impact statement that made further recommendations about which of the areas were "suitable" for wilderness. The recommendations were sent to President George Bush Sr., who in 1992 sent his recommendations to Congress, where they wait for a decision.

He said that he is hopeful that Congress will act on the lands, and added that the sooner it takes some action, the sooner the BLM can either manage lands specifically as wilderness, or allow more uses on them.

Maintaining values

Until then, the BLM manages wilderness study areas to maintain their naturalness, their ability to provide a place for solitude and to protect resources on the land, said Gavin Hoban, wilderness specialist with the Prineville BLM.

"We're kind of keeping it frozen in a sense, we just want to maintain all those values that were found to be worthy in 1980," Hoban said.

But with population growth, he said, it's a struggle to keep the lands the way they were.

There are fewer restrictions in wilderness study areas than in wilderness areas. For example, off-road vehicles are generally permitted on designated routes in wilderness study areas, although a management plan a few years ago determined there wouldn't be any designated routes in the Badlands.

Mountain biking is also permitted on designated trails in wilderness study areas, as are grazing and mining operations if the activities were in place before the wilderness study area was established.

And some are pushing for Congress to consider the areas sooner, rather than later.

"We've been in limbo now for 15 years," said Bill Marlett, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, a Bend-based environmental group. "It is an interim status, but a lot of people say why can't we move on?"

"It's up to Greg Walden and the rest of our delegation to put closure on the WSA status," he said.

Having the Badlands designated as a wilderness could add one more thing to draw people's attention to the area, just like when Newberry Crater gained attention when it was declared a national monument in 1990. There could be an economic benefit to having a wilderness study area upgraded, he added.

"When is the Oregon delegation going to get off the dime and deal with formal designation of these areas, not only for the benefit of the land itself, but as a benefit for the state of Oregon?" he asked.

Waiting for consensus

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who recently proposed legislation relating to the Mt. Hood Wilderness on Forest Service land, is open to settling the issue of wilderness study areas like the Badlands, but hasn't taken a position on wilderness designation, said Walden spokesman Dallas Boyd.

"Congressman Walden is certainly open-minded to a final resolution of the Badlands," Boyd said. "But obviously he's interested in gaining consensus and unanimity among the various stakeholders."

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is reviewing wilderness study areas around the state, said spokeswoman Melissa Merz, and like Walden wants to see consensus on the Badlands before taking action.

"Senator Wyden is generally supportive," she said. "But we want to see the community coalesce behind a consensus approach."

The Oregon Natural Desert Association is also pushing for the BLM to update its inventories of land that has wilderness potential, and it has filed lawsuits against the agency to achieve that goal. During the Clinton administration, the U.S. Department of Interior established inventory guidelines, but these were overturned during the Bush administration, Marlett said.

"BLM's inventory is out of date," Marlett said, adding that his organization went into the field and surveyed the land. It identified 8 million acres that should be wilderness study areas under the Clinton administration's guidelines.

"We want BLM to maintain an up-to-date inventory of lands that have wilderness values," he said. He added that he is hopeful that in the next few years, the wilderness inventory will be a part of the agency's regular management updates.

As a result of the organization's lawsuits, the Oregon /Washington BLM district is coming up with ways to evaluate individual areas to see if they should be wilderness study areas, said Michael Campbell, spokesman for the district. He said the district hopes to have guidelines for these evaluations in the next several months.

In the meantime, however, he said the agency will continue to manage the wilderness study areas "with a special eye, and some degree of special consideration."

Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 617-7811 or at kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.